Project abstract for group ohsh

Metallic Nanostructures for Biosensing and Photonics

This research group focuses on the interaction of light with metallic nanostructures for the use of biosensing, metamaterials, and spectroscopy. By using microfabrication techniques, they fabricate small metallic structures that are resonant with light to create extremely high local fields. This large field enhancement enables very strong interactions with matter, even individual molecules, for the use of chemical identification, imaging, and sensing, that would not be available to other techniques. Various ongoing projects include the development of novel near-field imaging probes, lipid bilayer and raft formation for analogs to cellular systems, high-performance design of devices for chemical diagnostics and sensing, and advanced metamatericals for light trapping in photonics. In order to design and study these devices, numerical modeling is used to simulate these structures and their complex coupling with light at the nanoscale.